


It's you and it's me and we're going to be alright my love

by queenofchildren



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, just Clarke and Bellamy finally catching a break, not actually romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 09:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6465382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofchildren/pseuds/queenofchildren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Clarke and Bellamy leave for the sea to finally heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's you and it's me and we're going to be alright my love

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think it will actually happen, but I really want Clarke and Bellamy to just get a break, get away from everyone, and get better. So this is what I wrote (again). Inspired by the The Woodlands' song "Countryside", which is beautiful and peaceful and everyone should listen to and think of Bellarke.
> 
> ETA: This was written at some point before they make it to Luna's rig, so the Luna here is different than on the show and based solely on Lincoln's brief mention of her.

 

She’s not abandoning them again, she swears up and down: to her mother who looks like seeing one more person she loves in danger will push her over the edge. To Monty, who gets angrier than she’s ever seen him. To Octavia, who cuts her off with a completely unexpected hug and a whispered “thank you”, because she may hate her brother right now but she still wants him to get better.

She has no intention of abandoning them ever again. They are her people, for better or worse. But this time, it’s Bellamy who needs the time and space she so selfishly took for herself when she left after Mount Weather. And Bellamy, who at this point is made entirely out of guilt and self-loathing and only held together by his boundless loyalty to he people he loves - he won’t leave them behind, not even when most of them turn against him.

With Pike dying in a way so accidental that it doesn’t really satisfy the grounders’ call for bloody justice, the Arkadians are looking for a scapegoat, someone to sacrifice in order to absolve themselves of their guilt, and Clarke has already noticed the hushed whispers around Bellamy, the calculating looks thrown in his direction.

It’s only a matter of time, she knows. With Lexa dead, blood must and always will have blood. But it will not be Bellamy’s.

So she cooks up a plan, with Kane and her mother, Octavia and Lincoln, and presents it to Bellamy in a way she knows he won’t be able to refuse: By having Kane appeal to him. Clarke hates herself for suggesting it because she knows it will work but she also knows it will hurt him, that he’ll think Kane is only sending him on a sudden, drawn-out and rather vague diplomatic mission because he can’t bear to face the man who condemned him to death.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Kane loves Bellamy like a son, and tries harder than anyone to understand his actions. But Bellamy is nowhere near ready to be loved.

So they walk out of Arkadia, side by side the way they were always meant to be, to try and finally heal.

***

 

He figures it out barely a week into their trip, the manipulation that has brought him here, and his anger is as harsh as it is justified. Clarke lets it rain down on her, words like blows, all of whom she deserves, and doesn’t flinch, doesn’t try to justify her lies.

But she does tell him that she thinks he was in danger, that sooner or later his own guilt or the Arkadians’ fear would have consumed him, and that she’d do it again in a heartbeat to protect him, and much worse things too.

That night is the only time during their trip that she’s seriously afraid he’ll turn back.

He doesn’t.

But he refuses to so much as look at her for several days afterwards, and Clarke knows she has no right to try and make him. She’s happy as long as he stays, walking silently two steps behind her as if he’s still having her back even when he can’t look in her eyes. And at the end of every silent day, Clarke tells herself: maybe tomorrow.

In the end, the same demons that drove them apart bring them closer again, the ones that come at night with loving smiles but cold dead hands and that have her waking up with dried tears on her cheeks and the names of dead loved ones on her lips.

But clearly, her demons have not met Bellamy yet, Bellamy who may glare and glower at her during the day but who is nonetheless there to fight her battles at night, wrapping firm, steady arms around her shoulders and whispering soft words into her hair - _shh, it’s alright, it was only a dream._

His nightmares are different from hers, they’re not choked sobs and helpless whimpers but screams that leave his voice hoarse in the morning and muscles so tense she knows he’ll be sore for days.

Healing, she eventually understands, is difficult; it takes patience and effort, and more strength than may be left in either of them.

***

 

They run into an Azgeda border patrol once, but Bellamy’s white-knuckled grip on the automatic rifle her mother insisted they take keeps the encounter uneventful and both small groups quietly go their way. Clarke is still nervous the entire rest of the trip, not so much because she’s afraid of being picked off by grounders with uncertain allegiances but because she’s afraid of what she will do to prevent it. If there’s anything her time on earth has shown her, it is that her own capacity for survival is boundless and terrifying.

And then there’s the expression on Bellamy’s face when he points the rifle at the Azgeda warriors, or rather, the complete absence of one: Just a blank, hard slate, unfeeling and unyielding and inhuman, a look Clarke knows all too well because she must have sported it herself too many times by now.

She takes the rifle off him after that and carries it herself. It’s unwieldy and it keeps painfully hitting her in the back unless she makes the strap so tight it chafes, but the worst thing about it is wondering how heavy it must have felt for Bellamy.

She doesn’t hand it back until they’ve reached the sea.

And the sea… the sea makes up for a lot of things.

***

 

The sea could be a healer, Clarke thinks after they’ve sat there and stared out across the endless blue for what might have been hours, if she wasn’t so unforgiving. But the sea has help, in the form of the very same person whose name Clarke has been holding on to during this whole trip.

Luna is a woman about Bellamy’s age, with intricately braided hair and dark, even skin that makes Clarke think of Wells with a sudden pang of sadness. But there’s no room for sadness in Luna’s company, who fusses over them with the kind of smothering maternal warmth that would be irritating if it wasn’t so heartfelt.

Luna sets them up in a small, tidy hut where two alcoves are separated from the small main room with curtains to provide some privacy they no longer know what to do with. She brings them some kind of brew that’s supposed to help them sleep, and Clarke finds that there’s something to be said for the old wisdom that everything looks a little less bleak after you’ve had a good night’s sleep.

When Bellamy emerges from his alcove the next morning, the dark rings under his eyes have faded considerably and his hair is sticking up wildly in all directions as he blinks into the morning sunlight, stretching his back and breathing in deeply. He still looks like he needs a few more chances at a good nights sleep, but nonetheless a lot healthier than he has since they left, and when he actually spots her and smiles tentatively, Clarke thinks that maybe this could be enough, for a while at least: uninterrupted sleep and relearning how to smile.

Of course, for every smile there is another nightmare waiting for them in the dead of night; for every word spoken there are twice as many left unsaid because speaking them out loud would be too painful.

Still, there is progress. Clarke talks to anyone who’s anyone in the entire boat people area, trying to get a feel of what it is Arkadia could offer them before she proposes an official alliance. Bellamy doesn’t participate in those conversations, too reluctant to get involved in anything political. But he does his part for their diplomatic endeavour, joining the village’s builders in finishing a roof and its woodcutters in stocking up on firewood for the winter. 

The local fishermen and -women teach him how to swim and then take him along when they depart for a week-long fishing trip, an occasion that turns Clarke into a nervous wreck because how can she trust something as wild and volatile as the sea with something as precious as this life?

But he returns, with salt-caked skin and impossibly tangled hair, triumphantly presenting her with one of the fish he helped to catch - and smiling from ear to ear, joy and hope greeting her from every laugh line and dimple. She hugs him then, her relief in that moment showing the extent of her worry before, greater even than the fear that he’ll push her away.

He doesn’t.

***

 

In the evenings, Luna tells them about what happened after the cataclysm, about how people survived against all odds and rebuilt themselves from the ashes, how different forms of civilizations rose and fell with dizzying speed, how people starved and withered and yet persisted, and Clarke thinks wearily that really, grounders and sky people weren’t so different all along.

Bellamy on the other hand is fascinated, continuing to lean forward until he’s perched on the edge of the bench they’re sharing, listening breathlessly and almost falling off the bench in excitement when Luna mentions that there’s a book in her small, treasured library that tells stories of the rise and fall of ancient empires. The nightblood-turned-historian recalls how her mother used to read it to her and cry, because the same thing happened to their nuclear-obsessed society before its downfall and all she could think was how it was possible that no one saw it coming.

But just when Clarke gets sad for humanity and its inability to learn from past mistakes, Bellamy leans back again, his shoulder pressed against hers a little more closely than before, his knee bumping into hers encouragingly while he gives her a look that says “are you alright?“, and she thinks that maybe all hope is not lost.

Maybe people learn from their mistakes, Clarke hopes when she remembers Lexa and, with the kind of clarity that only time brings, realizes the many ways in which they were bad for each other. Maybe, once they’re done atoning for their sins, people can get a fresh start, she thinks as she watches Bellamy play tag with a group of giggling children while the rifle gathers dust in the corner of their hut. Maybe even monsters can turn back into people, if someone loves them enough.

Maybe.

 


End file.
